Your donation will be matched
Help us launch Chippenham's first Community Tree Nursery to grow and share free native, edible trees - for a greener, sustainable future!
by Ben Luger in Chippenham, England, United Kingdom
We’ve already hit our stretch target - but we still need your support! Any additional funds we raise over our £3,000 target will provide a huge helping hand with our essential operations as a Community Interest Company, including improving our website and completing our annual accounts. We have plenty of rewards still available too, so please keep supporting us!
We’re launching the first ever Community Tree Nursery in Chippenham, Wiltshire that will produce between 500 and 1,000 tree saplings every year for the local community, grown by the community.
We’ll grow native, edible trees from seed for residents to plant at home, school and work for free, as specimen trees and edible hedgerows.
Building on the success of Rooted Chippenham, a community market garden initiative, Rooted Chippenham Community Tree Nursery will be entirely volunteer-led. Best of all, it will engage with hundreds of residents every year, raising awareness of the climate and biodiversity crisis and enabling meaningful community action.
This funded project has the potential to leave a legacy of up to 6,000 native edible trees in the local community, that would otherwise not exist. This could result in the capture of up to 6,000 tonnes of atmospheric carbon during the lifetime of the trees - equivalent to the emissions of driving a car 15 million miles!
These trees will also help to mitigate the effects of extreme weather, made more likely due to climate change. This includes helping to reduce local flood risk and soil erosion by intercepting rainfall, enabling water to be absorbed into the ground more quickly and reducing surface water runoff. They will also help to cool the air during heat waves.
The trees will also provide a significant boost to local biodiversity throughout our community, creating a widespread network of lasting natural habitats that will support over 300 different wildlife species for generations to come.
We can't make this happen without you! You can support this exciting project by:
This Crowdfunder is supercharged thanks to match funding by Aviva that will double your donation to help us reach our target (up to £250 on the first donation per person only). If you’re quick you can grab one of our brilliant rewards too!
Why do we need more trees? Because they're incredible! Here's how increasing the number of edible trees and hedges will benefit our local community:
By focusing on edible trees, we will build on the mission of Rooted Chippenham to connect people to locally grown food and empower sustainability practices. The native, edible tree species we hope to initially grow include: Crab Apple, Wild Pear, Wild Cherry, Cherry Plum, Elder, Hazel, Blackthorn, Rowan and Silver Birch.
Our trees will be grown and supplied in a plug of soil with a nice healthy root system, meaning that once our community tree nursery is in full swing, we can give them away to residents throughout most of the year.
Our Community Tree Nursery will be powered entirely by passionate local volunteers - a fantastic way for people of all ages and abilities to get involved and make a real difference! Whether you want to connect with your community, learn new skills, or simply enjoy the outdoors, there will be opportunities for everyone, including:
(Images of the Rooted Chippenham garden and our volunteers)
We also have the exciting opportunity to reach over 36,000 residents via social media, press coverage, our website and 1-2-1 conversations, creating a ripple effect of change and action.
The money raised from this crowdfunding campaign will enable us to fully establish the Community Tree Nursery at our existing Rooted Chippenham site (located at the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre) with all the equipment and consumables needed to germinate and grow a minimum of 500 saplings per year for at least the next six years. If we hit our stretch target, this will increase up to 1,000 saplings per year. The funding will also cover the cost of supplying free tree guards with our trees, to ensure they have the best chance of success.
To make this vision a reality, we need funding secured by March 2025. This will ensure we’re ready to grow trees for the 2025 season.
The good news? We already have all the seeds we need for our first year! They're currently undergoing overwintering stratification, a process that mimics natural winter conditions to help seeds break dormancy and boost germination rates, preparing to burst into life when sown in Spring 2025.
We have secured in-kind support from the amazing tree planting charity More Trees BANES, who are located nearby in the city of Bath. They currently oversee 17 Community Tree Nurseries and are on hand with all the advice and support we need, including visits to their established nurseries for knowledge sharing.
(Image by More Trees BANES of an established Bath-based CTN)
We have some awesome rewards for you to claim as a special thank you for supporting this project, including specially signed copies of these amazing books!
The rewards start at only £5 and include:
You can also donate any amount without selecting a reward.
We must express our sincere gratitude to Katie Holten, Mike Berners-Lee, Jonathon Porritt, Jen Gale, James Piper, Natalie Fee, Derek Niemann, Charles Dowding and Archie Miles for kindly donating signed copies of their wonderful books. Also Westonbirt Arboretum for donating tickets to their amazing arboretum. We asked if they could support our Crowdfunder and they all said yes without hesitation. Thank you!
Rooted Chippenham is a community market garden in Chippenham, Wiltshire, established in 2022. It is for the community by the community. We believe in mutual aid and see everyone as equal. Everyone can contribute at every level.
In only two years we have created a diverse green space that benefits the entire community and grows fruit and vegetables using sustainable practices, in allotment style beds and a polytunnel, using rain water harvesting. To date we have a community of 28 volunteers that regularly work together, sharing the resulting produce for free.
Rooted is a CIC and is led by three directors, Vanessa Davey, Helen Barlow and Andrew Harmer, who along with countless volunteers, have made it the success it is today. The Rooted Chippenham Community Tree Nursery is led by Ben Luger, a local volunteer at Rooted and a Tree Keeper with charity Earthwatch Europe for the local Tiny Forest located in Monkton Park.
This project offers rewards in return for your donation. Please select a reward below.